Page 43 of Never Trust the Living (Battle Crows MC 7)

I didn’t want him to be here just because of the baby. I didn’t want pity from him. I could do this on my own.

“Bram, do you know why I don’t like cilantro?” I asked quietly.

Our very last fight had started because of cilantro.

We’d been out to eat, and he’d thought the cilantro wasn’t a big deal.

I, on the other hand, did.

He frowned hard, and I could see that he couldn’t even remember why I was asking that question.

Most likely, he didn’t even realize that I was gone until he didn’t have any clean laundry.

Which means, he probably didn’t remember the fight that had sparked me to leave.

“I know you don’t like it but…” He hesitated.

“But you don’t know why I make such a big deal about it,” I found myself finishing his sentence.

His shoulders slumped. “Yeah.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and said, “Fourteen percent of the world population can’t eat cilantro because there’s an olfactory gene called OR6A2.”

I could tell he was confused, but I kept going. “OR6A2 is responsible for detecting aldehydes. There are aldehydes in cilantro. Long story short, cilantro is sometimes used to make soap. When I eat cilantro, my brain automatically tells me that it tastes like soap.”

Bram opened his mouth and closed it.

“Meaning, every time I get cilantro in my stupid Chipotle rice, it tastes like I grated up a bar of soap in it. Would you like to eat something that tastes like soap?” I asked.

Bram’s shoulders slumped impossibly further.

“That night, we got into a fight about it because they added it to my order when I explicitly mentioned to have plain white rice. I wasn’t being difficult. I wasn’t trying to be a bitch. I wasn’t being a ‘Karen’ like you accused me of being. I was trying toenjoy what I was eating. And when you threw a fit because I wouldn’t eat my meal that you refused to have them send back, you reminded me of my brother.”

His mouth fell open in shock then.

“What?” His voice had raised in pitch.

That’d been one very hard truth I’d had to share with Bram when we got married: Amon.

Amon was by far my worst torturer.

But some of my scars went so deep that I could never show them to Bram and him not see me as weak.

But there were some things that I had to tell him. There were also some things that Bram knew on his own. Like the night that he’d offered me an alibi.

The way that Amon had snuck out the previous night the verdict had been handed down and let me know in no uncertain terms that no matter what, he would find a way to make my life a living hell.

“My brother used to add it to my food for fun,” I said softly. “So when I say that I can’t eat it, I can’t. I eat it, I’ll throw up. Ask me how I know.”

His eyes looked even more tortured when he said, “How do you know?”

“Because he did it often, just to watch me get sick. Every time. Have you ever been so hungry that you eat something, knowing it’ll make you sick, yet eating it anyway?” I asked quietly. “I was diagnosed with ARFID—avoidance/restrictive food intake disorder. Pretty much, sometimes I just can’t eat. Can’t make myself eat. Because of things that he did to me in the past. One of those being tampering with my food and making me suspicious of almost everything.” I hesitated. “The fact that I can even gosomewhere where I allow someone else to prepare my food is an amazing feat, according to my therapist.”

“You’re in therapy?” he asked quietly.

I shrugged. “It was either that or…”

I didn’t finish.

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